Reported as "an unlikely and serendipitous odyssey (page 3)" to have named the 1876 Los Angeles Cathedral after "The Patron Saint of Nobodies", St. Vibiana of ancient Rome, a martyred female child, also said to be a virgin, her remains said to be found by Pope Pius the Ninth in his garden.
This unusual effort, it seems, was in relation to the Los Angeles Mexican-American Catholic community, being the largest in the world outside of Mexico, wanting to have their cathedral named after their most-loved Lady of Guadalupe, the mother of Christ.
I was told the Los Angeles Archdioceses Administration did not want to look like a satellite of the Guadalupe Archdioceses by naming their cathedral after the Lady of Guadalupe, "The Cathedral in Her Name that Never Was". The 1876 archdioces arranged the "unlikely and serendipitous odyssey" to appease the Los Angeles parishioners by having St. Vibiana, "a Mary-like innocent female youth", the "Patron Saint of Nobodies", discovered by the Pope himself, as the name for their cathedral.
But when the bomb explosion occurred at the immediate site of the original Guadalupe picture in Mexico in 1921, the Los Angeles parishioners resolved to have something special at their Los Angeles cathedral in the name of their most beloved icon, and the great sculpture was forged. This story was told to me by David Sutton, the cathedral business manager who first hired me in 1989. He resigned around 1995 when Bill Baeder took his place. Mr. Baeder's opinion of gate age
The sculpture was truly outstanding in its presence just inside the main entrance. The sculpture was discarded as not architecturally-suited to the new cathedral, Our Lady of Angels, in 1999 when the archdioceses moved its address.
It is an "obvious omission" that no photos, articles or mentions of any kind survived in the archives of the public library or the L.A. Times after I showed the receipt. For instance... (page 3)
Decade after decade, this sculpture at the main entrance with holidays, weddings, funerals, graduations, babtisms, gatherings of joy and sorrow for loved-ones lost in war or home from hospitals, for festivals of all kinds and their most joyous celebration, her feast day of December 12, no mention, no photos anywhere.
I was hired to dismantle the sculpture assembly in the spring of '96. It can be set up as one likes to suit its new placement.
An article says a Korean church bought the 125 year old benches and pews. They were very nice people that day. The day they took the pews is the same day I took the sculpture down. Pews-2
Except, they only took half the pews. I hired a ten-man crew and 20' truck, and the other half of the benches I personally saw to their storage in the basement of the main L.A. Times building. Disdain and Debris
I asked the Korean people to take a photo of the gates, and they were nice enough to do that and send it to me. We did this before I began roughly dismantling the sculpture assembly, having been told to have it down that same day. I turned the photo in with my invoice not knowing there were no future plans for the sculpture. A copy of a picture of the Lady of Guadalupe was removed as well from the site. "She the Gate that Born the Child"
